All posts tagged EFSF

Slovakia, a euro-zone member since 2009, supports the use of euro bailout funds for buying sovereign bonds, seeing them as a way to lower borrowing costs for some of the bloc’s members and a step towards issuing joint euro-area bonds, the country’s finance minister said Tuesday.

Last week, European Union leaders approved the purchase of sovereign bonds by Europe’s financial stability funds, the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Stability Mechanism. The measure was approved on the insistence of Spain and Italy but has met with opposition from some of the smaller but more financially secure euro area countries such as Finland and the Netherlands.

“I view the plan to buy bonds of individual countries as a kind of transitory measure,” Peter Kazimir said in an interview in the Slovak capital, adding that the bond buying policy is “part of the euro zone’s evolutionary development.”

Very little detail is known of how the measure will be implemented and it will likely be a key topic at the euro-zone’s finance minister meetings in July. The issue is vital for putting the euro area on a sound economic footing, Mr. Kazimir said. Read More »

The downgrades of several euro-zone countries late last week by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services may further cloud the Czech government’s wait-and-see approach regarding boosting its support for the troubled euro zone.

“It is absolutely natural that you cannot take a binding decision before you have a final text. Anything else would be ridiculous,” Prime Minister Petr Necas said last week before the S&P move.

S&P stripped France and Austria of their triple-A ratings, and downgraded seven others, including Spain, Italy and Portugal. It kept the triple-A rating on Europe’s largest economy, Germany. Read More »

The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires sat down with Russian President Medvedev’s chief economic aide, Arkady Dvorkovich, to discuss possible aid for the European Financial Stability Facility, the Russian economy and the ruble.

President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aide said Russia would consider taking part in the EFSF’s private fund via its sovereign wealth funds. But the aide said the Kremlin prefers to help the euro-zone via Russia’s contributions to the International Monetary Fund. Russia has the world’s third-biggest foreign reserves, currently at $514.6 billion. Read More »

Relief following final approval this week of the euro zone’s revised bailout fund is proving short lived, at least in central Europe.

A Slovak ‘yes’ for the European Financial Stability Facility came at a price and euro zone watchers should take note. The right-leaning, fiscally conservative Slovak government fell as a result of supporting the bailout.

Calls for solidarity now appear to be bordering on bullying and future support from countries in the region may be hard won. Read More »

A handful of dissident Slovak lawmakers held up approval of a critical part of a euro-zone crisis-management plan Tuesday, setting back European leaders’ campaign to bolster confidence in the common currency, as European officials pushed more openly for a deeper haircut for holders of Greek government bonds.

The measure’s rejection means that Slovakia, the euro zone’s second-poorest member, is the only one of the bloc’s 17 countries that hasn’t approved the expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility. Slovak lawmakers said parliament would likely approve the measure eventually, as most parties in parliament support it. But first, the small country faces a political crisis, because its government also lost a vote of confidence late Tuesday.

Political and public opposition to bailouts in Slovakia partly reflect the relatively poor country’s anger at being asked to subsidize Greece, a wealthier country whose public finances have spun out of control. But broad political support in Slovakia for the euro zone’s anticrisis measures means Tuesday’s vote is expected to delay, rather than derail, the EFSF’s enlargement.

Mr. Sulik grew up in the West-German town of Pforzheim after his parents escaped from the then-totalitarian Czechoslovakia in 1980. He returned to his homeland in the early 1990s in search of business opportunities, continuing his economics studies in Munich and later at the University of Economics in Bratislava. Read More »

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